This invention relates to a method of cooking pizza pie wherein pizza pies having superior texture and taste can be produced with high efficiency.
The preparation of pizza pies has required a considerable expenditure of manual labor, and efforts have been made to improve the efficiency of the pizza making process and to reduce its cost. Generally speaking, these efforts have involved the use of some sort of a pan for handling and cooking the pizza pie.
One such prior art arrangement is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,065,583 and 4,184,421 to Ahlgren. The arrangement described in these patents uses a pan having a large bottom opening with a supporting annular ridge upon which is placed a thin flexible disk of metal foil having large holes therein to permit passage of heat to the bottom of the pizza dough which rests on top of said metal foil disk. The pizza is stored and cooked in this pan, and thereafter the metal foil disk (and pizza thereon) is removed from the pan by grasping a flange of the disk. The metal foil disk is then discarded.
The side walls of the pans of Ahlgren are shaped so that the pans can be stacked. However, due to the holes in the metal foil disk, air can flow to the bottom of the pizza dough during storage, thus drying out the dough.
During cooking, the edges of the pizza contact the side walls of the pan, which absorb heat from the pizza, so that the edges of the pizza are not properly cooked. Further, during cooking the portions of the bottom of the pizza exposed through the holes in the metal disk are cooked to a greater extent than the other portions of the bottom of the pizza, often resulting in burn spots in the shape of the disk openings.
Another pizza making arrangement is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,347,181 to Pizzo. This arrangement employs cooking disks on which the pizza dough is placed, the disks being in the form of a mesh or a foraminated sheet, with a peripheral lip which facilitates removal of the disk from the cooking oven by means of a peel. However, the arrangement of Pizzo suffers from the same disadvantage as Ahlgren in that during storage air can reach the pizza dough to dry it out. Further, Pizzo does not show any provision for stacking, and does not utilize a pan from which the disk is removable after storage.
Both Ahlgren and Pizzo suffer from the problem of pizza dough oozing down through the holes in the disk during storage, this problem obviously being more severe in the arrangement of Ahlgren. During cooking, the dough which has oozed down through the holes sticks to the bottom surface of the oven. Further, the cooked pizza is difficult to remove from its support, due to interlocking of the cooked dough in the holes.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide an improved method for making pizza using a cooking disk and overcoming the disadvantages of the Ahlgren and Pizzo arrangements.